Managing Geeks
by
Charlie Bess
One of the folks I work with sent me this posting pointing out 10 things to look out for when managing technical folks.
I could definitely relate to many of them and since one of the things about technology is that it shifts behavior and expectation, it made me wonder how these rules shift as technology improves, since I could have read that same posting 20 years ago, relatively unchanged.
The description of the issues and response didn't really use technology to facilitate addressing the situation. Is there a "cobbler's children" issue here or is it really something else? With all our modern technology (e.g, improved workflow, dashboarding, portals and knowledge management) are we (technical folks) sometimes willing to force these tools on others, but reluctant to use them ourselves?
One of the issues was "Don't give them any tools." Maybe the issue has as much to do with the inability to create a business case to make the tool a business issue, instead of a technical issue.
We used to joke around within the EDS development community that "SE time is free" meaning that dedicated developers are willing to do whatever it takes to make a project successful. You can only go to that well a limited number of times though, before it becomes dry.
